The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to procure 25 lakh metric tonnes of paddy from the farmers in the state starting from October 1.
State Chief Secretary Javed Usmani said here that 3250 purchasing centers would procure the paddy till February 28, 2014.
The directions were given in a high level meeting held here on Thursday to review the paddy procurement process. Senior officials of the Agriculture department and officials from APC branch attended the meeting.
Chief Secretary said after government received reports of non-payment of money to bonafide farmers Government has decided that this time the farmers would be made payment through account payee cheques or through RTGS by transferring the amount directly in their bank account.
''Of the total procurement, 10 per cent or 2.5 lakh tonne of paddy would be procured by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) while the remaining would be purchased by different state government agencies,'' the Chief Secretary said.
Every purchase centers would be two electronic weighing machines while generator would be kept for power back, he said and added: "Government would ensure that farmers get good remunerative price of their produce."
As complaints galore about paucity of space to store paddy Usmani said that the total storage capacity of paddy is state is of 37.65 lakh tonnes so there will be no problem to store the targeted paddy.